The Chamber of May 11 and the minority

MM. J. Kessel and Suarez continue their political investigation in the Weekly Review. For the second time, they questioned Mr. Georges Mandel, who had not hidden from them, before the elections of May 11, that he thought that the majority of the Chamber of November 1919 would be defeated.

“What do you think are the causes of the defeat?” investigators asked.

The first and most serious of all, replied Mr. Mandel, is that thanks to the inconsistencies of a voting method which forced both sides to make alliances that were sometimes equally immoral, we broke with the sound rules of the parliamentary system. Hence a confusionism which constitutes a formidable danger for representative institutions. If you question a member of the minority today, he will tell you coldly that the cartelists are not good French people.” Now, why would Mr. Poincaré's patriotism be greater than that of Mr. Herriot? And, if you asked the most authoritative politicians of the majority what they think, for example, of the vanquished whom you kindly put to the question, they would answer you that he is at the very least an “infamous reactionary”; and yet, on the orders of their leaders, the Action Française leaguers voted en masse against me, under the pretext that being Jewish I was a legal Frenchman, and not a legitimate Frenchman.

“What are the consequences of the election?” asked MM. Kessel and Suarez. Mr. Mandel replied:

I do not insult the newly elected officials by believing that they will repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. At least they are doing their politics. They did not ask their adversaries to govern in their place, they took care of it themselves. They began by forming a homogeneous ministry, which frankly deployed its program; I congratulate them.

What should the opposition do?

Oh! the complete opposite of what Mr. Herriot himself did for nearly four years, most often voting for governments he opposed in the country, there would be nothing more unfortunate than to stop, to distort the meaning of the last elections, by promoting an operation to dissociate the cartel. Certainly, we see Saxons from the old majority who are already looking for an opportunity to betray the new majority. Thus, after having been the ministers of the National Bloc they would willingly become those of the Left Cartel. It is through such practices that the country is gradually being diverted from the parliamentary regime.